


First Sights, Last Sights

by vaderade



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Earthborn (Mass Effect), Gen, Post-Mass Effect 2: Arrival, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), i wrote this because i had an Emotion a while back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 22:57:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11300580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaderade/pseuds/vaderade
Summary: The same view that made Shepard want to explore the galaxy was what she thought would be her last of it.





	First Sights, Last Sights

**Author's Note:**

> Purple my prose and count my toes! 
> 
> Here's a drabble I wrote about Shepard a little while ago.

Shepard sat together with Anderson in the back of the dropship as they moved towards Vancouver. Silently. The guards had excused themselves when he had come in. She was thankful. This didn’t have to be as hard as they were making it.

“You know that I’ll do all I can for you, Shepard.” Anderson said at length. “You do know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks.” She winced. “—But you can’t ruin yourself for me. The Alliance needs you, and that means you might need to let me go.”

Shepard cast her eyes about, from her hands to the ground, to wherever a scuff in the metal caught the light. But not at him.

“Career be damned,” Anderson grunted, “It’s a bad situation, I’ll admit, but you’ve been in worse. So have I.”

Shepard sniffed, and only briefly met his eyes. He was staring at her, and all she could think about was how there was nowhere to hide. What he said… was true, and Shepard knew that worrying about this was mildly ridiculous. Being a Marine taught one… certain things. Acceptance that some things might always be beyond control was among them— circumstances and consequences alike. But the consequences for killing individuals, especially of ill-repute? Known quantities, few, and trivial in her line of work. The consequences of eliminating an entire system? She was on the cusp of finding out. And as much as watching a hundred thousand lives blink out on a screen in front of her was shocking, sickening, she was more dizzied by the fallout.

Anderson squeezed her shoulder. Shepard looked up, surprised, and tried her best to flash a quick, comforting smile at him.

“You’re right about that, Anderson,” was all she managed to say. It didn’t hurt to pretend that things wouldn’t be so bad.

Anderson looked as if he was about to say something else when a chorus of gasps came from the cockpit, elated voices murmuring all at once. Anderson stood, and Shepard watched him walk to the cockpit. Shepard braced herself, expecting trouble. But when Anderson saw whatever-it-was, he shouted to the pilot with a tremendous smile. Shepard, confused, couldn’t quite make out anything but one word. ‘Comet.’

The visual simulator expanded to take up most of the wall behind her. Shepard started from her seat and backed away towards the symmetrical row on the opposite side. Her eyes widened. The view was jaw-dropping.

Below her, the thousands of lights from the metropolises below glittered with an unforgettable brilliance. But above, there stretched a streak of white, like a broad arrow piercing the sky. A dazzling streak of curved light, brighter than the sun or indeed any star. She stared at it, transfixed. The cold blue arc stretched above their tiny craft, beyond and into the night-like void.

“…Comet Tang-Mitsuhino 11 is reaching its perihelion. It will be visible throughout Earth’s Northern Hemisphere tonight and for the next few days…” news radio crackled in the background. “…the brightest we’ve seen since the Great Comet of 2165, Alliance astronomers report it may be brighter than the Great Comet that was seen nearly two centuries ago in 2023.”

Shepard barely heard it, entranced as she was. 

In 2165 she was almost 10 years old. That memory, even twenty years since, was so fresh she could almost feel the cold wind of a New York January stinging her cheeks.

She was there again, under the streetlamps. All bundled in her mismatched hat, scarf, and gloves. She could remember her thick boots crunching the snow delightfully, and the warmth from wearing five sweaters under a puff coat two sizes too large. She had been walking back home, to the cold basement with warm food beneath the church, the apartment where the pious Father Soskin had raised her. The same one in which he would die the following year, all the gold-filigreed icons peering over his bed to mourn.

She remembered the look of her breath on that night, white clouds in the January air, a mere shade away from the snow that littered the ground. She walked through her city’s past glory, trash-filled Prospect Park, headed West. There was nobody in sight, late as it was. She was at once scared and relieved. Scared to be alone, relieved that she would return home without being menaced by the older boys who squatted on their cardboard and pegged the starlings with rocks. Not that she wouldn't fight them, but because the last time she did, the good Father had to come break it up. Soskin scolded all of them so harshly she could almost feel her neck burning from the shame.

The walk was icy. Treacherous, even. But she paid the path no mind, that was, until she slipped and fell. Her hat slid off her head and she scrambled over the thick ice to shove it back on. It was too cold to be without it, especially when the wind stung along the tips of her ears. She shivered briefly in the foot-deep snow.

But as she righted herself and stood, she looked up. A blazing trail of stardust filled her eyes. It was as if the comet had appeared just for her, alone, by some stroke of fate. She stood there, not noticing even as she began to shake, and watched even as her feet and hands grew numb.

It almost had not hit Shepard until that moment, how fateful, to see first see this comet from the angle of one who yearned to join it up above, and now to the last great sight she would see from a viewport. That night— before the hardship, the yearning, the struggle, or the feeling that she had finally won —only lead to now, to have sat here onboard a shuttle facing something harsher than whatever a military court would do. 

Shepard sat down, finding her eyes watering. Anderson returned. He looked at Shepard with the kind of pitying concern that only he was allowed to offer, as her former Captain.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

“Sure is,” Shepard answered, finding her voice lower than usual. “I can’t believe it’s the same one… saw it as a kid. Did I ever tell you about that?” She said, willing her voice not to crack.

“No,” Anderson replied, “I don’t think you ever mentioned it.”

Shepard nodded glumly. “I guess I didn’t.”

Anderson sat next to her and watched. They were silent. Shepard grit her teeth, beating back a flood.

“Did you make a wish?” he prompted. Shepard wasn’t sure if she wanted to answer, suddenly embarrassed. “I wished I was in the Reserves.”

Shepard choked on a chuckle. Career military. How could she have forgotten that Anderson had his own spot of heroism back in the day? Keeping the “nasty bird-faced freaks” at their door. Huzzah.

“I just wished to see couple thousand more of those.” Shepard volunteered acridly, gesturing half-heartedly to the image in front of them. “But I don’t think I’ll see one again,” she sighed, “not after all this.”

“Who knows.” Anderson mused. “No matter what they want to think, the Alliance is going to need you, Shepard. It’s only a matter of time.”

Shepard nodded, eyes glued to the comet even as they descended. She said nothing when the viewport closed. Her heart was empty— it too had burnt itself away and left a trail beyond this world.


End file.
